Insomma

According to once senator Rick Santorum, forcing everyone to purchase health insurance would be unconstitutional. I have no background to opine on this matter but I would like Santorum and those who agree with him to clarify something for me. John Doe is 30 years old, athletic, has never been sick one day in has life - except for the odd cold - and feels immortal. He has seen no reason to "waste", say, some $6,000 a year on health insurance and uses this money to live better. Suddenly, he is diagnosed with a cancer that can be cured with an 80% chance of long-term survival; however, the treatment costs about $100,000 and he has neither savings nor assets to pay for it. What would the once senator suggest? Should we just let him die? How would this square with his deep-felt belief that life is sacred? If he will get treated, who will pay? The tax payers? HELL NO! I say. I was responsible, I purchased health care and had $6,000 less a year for vacations, restaurants, shows or savings and now my taxes will be used to cure him and care for him for the rest of his life since, after his illness, no insurance company would take him on? I am sorry Santorum: I do not believe that easily curable people should be left to die nor that the tax payers should bear the burden for those who have chosen not to purchase insurance. Ergo, regardless of constitutional hair splitting, I am totally in favor of compulsory insurance. Just like home insurers need to offer also automobile insurance in order to be allowed to operate in certain states - by the way, why is third party insurance compulsory for drivers? What makes this constitutional? - so health insurance companies should be compelled to offer a very basic insurance package where they also sell their more expansive and lucrative products. The premium would be deducted from salary for those employed and the self-employed would have to produce proof of insurance with their tax return. Each individual could chose among the various basic, private plans being offered in his or her state. Smart people are practical, not demagogues and may we be protected from the latter.

I voted for Hillary in the 2008 Democratic primary; I was very impressed by Obama but I feared that he did not have the necessary legislative experience to be an effective President. Nonetheless, in the election, I voted enthusiastically for Obama. Bush's eight years had been disastrous for the United States, McCane had gone back on everything he had stood for and Sarah Palin was a bad joke. Obama was a great orator who promised by-partisanship and I was excited by the prospect of electing the first Black president - not African-American but Black. Three years have passed and, along with many of his supporters, I am deeply disappointed with Obama. He allowed the liberals in his party to take over the legislative agenda and wasted too much time and too much capital on passing a very flawed Health Care reform while what the country needed was job creation. Back on the campaign trail, rallying his troops, Obama sounds more and more like a Socialist, bent on redistributing income and on insuring that the gap between rich and poor is reduced by taxing the rich rather than by improving the lot of the so-called 'have-nots'. The Democrats have always favored income redistribution; after all, many more "have-nots" that "haves" vote. However, economically, this does not make sense. I am not against a super tax for the real super rich; someone netting $100 million a year is unlikely to suffer were he to net only $90 million. But what is needed is a wide-ranging tax reform that will lower substantially the top rate, eliminate all loopholes and most deductions and make certain that a much larger part of the 50% who do not pay any taxes will have to start to do so. I agree that most capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income but taxes on dividends and inheritance taxes should be abolished since both are double taxation and the latter is plain and simple redistribution of wealth, a way of punishing those who have been successful for having been successful. I am not impressed by the Republican candidates for the Presidency and I shall have to wait for the Presidential debates before I make up my mind, but it is no longer a given that I will vote again for Obama. Since I suspect that most Independents like me share these feelings, I think that the 2012 election may be up for grabs.

Our Own Taliban?
Rick Santorum is for family values; he is for bringing back small manufacturers; the grandson of a miner, he is the prototype of the American story of social mobility. People like him for this and they are right. But until now he has flown under the radar; not much has been written about his social values and his ethics while in Congress nor has has he been questioned about these during the many debates and/or interviews. We know that he is against abortion and against family planning and contraception - any kind. Will he want a cross in every classroom? Will he mandate daily prayers to Jesus? Will he try to impose the teaching of creationism? Will he get his marching orders from the Pope, in Rome? The early settlers may have been mainly Christian but the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and, while most of the early settlers may have been Christians, today there are large minorities of non-Christians and atheists who do not want to live in a Christian theocracy. As President, it is likely that Santorum would try to emulate the Taliban with a Christian twist. Ethically, it is said that he has done this already while in Congress. The Taliban finances itself with opium and he financed himself - apparently - by having been the reigning king of pork - not an easy achievement in Washington - and having served special interests shamelessly.
We have been a secular society for almost 250 years and what we do not need is a President who will try make us into a Christian theocracy. Maybe we should designate part of the Middle East for religious fanatics and place within the confines of one country Muslim Fundamentalists, the whole Christian Right and all ultra-Orthodox Jews. Probably, they would get along quite well or, maybe, they would just kill each other to determine who the true God and the true Prophet are.

I think I'm ready for a career change. Since I like to opine, I need a good salary and pension plan and excellent health care coverage while not wanting to exert myself too much I believe that becoming a congressman or a senator would be ideal. I will even be able to use whatever non-public information I become privy to for playing the stock market with an ace (or two) in my sleeve. It is really ideal as it would be, as well, a job I could keep until I die. I would just have to hold enough town hall meetings, always vote to please my constituents, whatever the damage to the country as a whole, and trade some votes for pork that I could bring back to my district. Also, I like to eat well and I understand that I could be fed royally by lobbyists. Isn't it galling that so much of our tax money goes to sustain all these parasites? As the saying goes: "If you can't beat them join them..."

Gilad Shalit is back home. Six and one half years after being kidnapped, inside Israel, by Hamas he is free with family and friends. Needless to say, I am very happy for Gilad and for his family; no one should endure what he did and a human life is, indeed, priceless. But is it worth more that another human life, or many other human lives? It is quite likely that most of the 1,000+ freed, convicted Hamas murderers and criminals will engage actively in kidnapping other Israeli soldiers and/or in murdering as many Israeli civilians as possible. Is their life worth less that Shalit's? A one for one exchange would have made sense. The exchange negotiated by the Israeli government may make short-term political sense but is long-term folly. As the saying goes: "Act in haste and repent in leisure."

Gilad Shalit is back home. Six and one half years after being kidnapped, inside Israel, by Hamas he is free with family and friends. Needless to say, I am very happy for Gilad and for his family; no one should endure what he did and a human life is, indeed, priceless. But is it worth more that another human life, or many other human lives? It is quite likely that most of the 1,000+ freed, convicted Hamas murderers and criminals will engage actively in kidnapping other Israeli soldiers and/or in murdering as many Israeli civilians as possible. Is their life worth less that Shalit's? A one for one exchange would have made sense. The exchange negotiated by the Israeli government may make short-term political sense but is long-term folly. As the saying goes: "Act in haste and repent in leisure."

Ever since 1962, when I was studying at Columbia Business School with Prof. Emile Benoit, the author of Europe At Sixes and Sevens, I had serious doubts about the viability of European unity. The Sixes and some of the Sevens united, eventually, to form the European Economic Community and its members took many steps towards unity, the most significant of which was, probably, the establishment of the Euro Zone.
However, there cannot be stable unity without political unity and, until the members of the EEC will be ready to become the equivalent of USA states and forfeit their sovereignty to a federal government, I will go on questioning the feasibility of the EEC. I remained skeptical as the Euro became increasingly worth more than the dollar and today I have doubts as to whether the Euro can survive. The Southern members of the EEC, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece have provided for their citizens a social safety net that cannot be justified by their GNP and now they expect the more prudent members of the union to bail them out. But they are not willing to forego any of their benefits, expecting the citizens of the latter to help pay for them. This is not going to happen; if I were a German citizen I would vote out of office any government that would use my hard earned tax money to make it possible for citizens of other countries to go on living above their means. I would give Greece until the end of this month to comply with all the draconic measures needed to set it back on the right financial track; should it fail to do so - undoubtedly this may be politically unfeasible - I would send Greece on a forced vacation away from the Euro Zone. Let it print all the drachmas it needs and restructure - like Argentina did - its foreign loans; the money that would have been used for the bailout I would use to keep in business the banks of the stronger EEC countries that have a large exposure to Greek loans. Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is not my decision to make. What I am doing is getting rid of most of my Euros.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a heterogeneous group whose language, however, seems to be rooted in leftist demagoguery. Basically, they are asking the government to curb the greed of 1% of the population that they see as detrimental to the remaining 99%. The big fallacy here is the assumption that only 1% of the population is greedy. Human beings are, by nature, greedy be they rich or poor. The Founding Fathers showed clear awareness of this when they drafted the Constitution to supplant the Articles of Confederation. The problem is nor greed, which is a given, but, rather, control of greed. Republicans, who want as little government interference as possible - effective controls entail large bureaucracies - have rid our system, over the last couple of decades, of most of the controls regulating financial institutions that had been enacted during the New Deal. I think that left and right can - and should - agree, demagoguery aside, that financial institutions and all large corporations should have to comply with enforced regulations that safeguard the individual against the power they derive from their size. Capitalism is like a game of Monopoly; while it allows for accumulation of wealth - even great wealth - it cannot be played properly without rules. I may not agree with the political philosophy of many Occupy Wall Street adherents but I do hope that the movement will grow sufficiently to awaken Congress from its apathy and force it to reinstate much needed regulations on financial institutions and large corporations that are running amok.

Are we seeing the true Obama? Has he faked being a centrist and made Nancy Pelosi take the brunt of an extreme left label while all along he was as extreme and was just trying to play to independents? Has agenda been, since the start of his Presidency, capital redistribution? Or is he the weak President we have lost confidence in who now, in a desperate effort to insure Democratic support, is playing to his party left wing, as the Republicans have been playing to their party's right wing? Is no one playing on America's team?
We are expecting Europe to bite the bullet and we should as well. We should stop using bad aids, take the bull by the horns and, bi-laterally, we should take up the huge task of overhauling totally the tax code, tort law, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Whoever has the guts and the now-how to do it, please step forward.

Band aids. Obama is trying to take care of deep, profusely bleeding gashes with tiny band aids. The cure can be nothing less than a total overhaul of the tax code, of tort law, of Social Security, of Medicare and of Medicaid. He is also offending many independents, who would like to support him, by putting forth a so-called "jobs plan" that is just a political gambit to make the Republicans look bad. The Republicans look bad without needing any help; why waste everyone's time with a plan that is, obviously, a non-starter, disingenuous and offensive. To offer to cut our bloated expenses by 1/2 a billion dollars while raising taxes by 1.5 billion dollars is pissing against the wind. I fear that Obama is doing all he can to insure that he will not be reelected. At this point, I no longer feel bad about losing Obama; but I am scared by the prospect of Perry, Bachmann or Palin as President. Moral of the story: don't be enchanted by one's fine words; find out whether they can do, in addition to talk.